


Something To Do With Oblivion

by speakgreektome (epicionly)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Universe, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 00:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13376661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epicionly/pseuds/speakgreektome
Summary: Maybe it's one-sided on Leon's part.





	Something To Do With Oblivion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yourhandiheld](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourhandiheld/gifts).



Cloud doesn’t look at him at all on the ride back, nestled surreptitiously amongst the cargo of Cid’s ship. The dust from the Coliseum sticks to the ragged patchy edges of his cloak, the material of his pants and the lugs of his combats, and his face is weary with so many years crawling his way up through the underworld. Leon looks at him, though. Leon looks and keeps looking, because Cloud isn’t.

It’s jarring: Cloud takes a breath, he crosses his legs, he closes his eyes and he sits with one hand on the wrapped handle of his buster sword, and suddenly, Leon doesn’t know him anymore. He’s too aware all of a sudden of the stiffness in Cloud’s broad shoulders, the flex of corded muscle stretched out from under cloth, the uneasy grip in the curl of Cloud’s fingers.

Cloud says, “I’ll see you,” when they dock on Hollow Bastion, and Leon says, “Try not to become a stereotype,” and Cloud says, snorts (rudely, quietly, [peacefully], [affectionately]): “Like that hair?” and that’s the last Leon sees of him in a while.

(Leon gets a haircut, and Aerith doesn’t ask him what made him change his mind.)

 

\--

 

1.

It occurs to Leon that he doesn’t want to die with this name.

It’s a sudden thought; sudden as the gripping pain when his femur snaps clean in half, leaving fingers scrambling against the grip – then barrel – then the spine of his gunblade before the shock of rocky ground where his feet were supposed to balance on slams against his braced forearm. Opposite fingers curl around the handle even as the remnants of shadows scatter around the blade deep in the crack of the earth. Leon grinds his teeth and thinks _No._

It’s a slow thought; slow as recognizing his limbs in the darkness before he remembers he can open his eyes. Slow as his brain slowly reeling, his fingers twitching against a handle, and his gaze sharpening as fast as his reflexes do.

Cloud is staring belligerently at him as Leon manages to heft himself to some sort of standing position, twisting the blade as a crutch. Cloud’s chest heaving likewise, half-way up the wall on the opposite side where he’s climbed to chase an errant dusk. He’s got his gloves up to his forearms, the buster sword unstrapped to his back after a swing, and the mako gleam of ocean’s depths. Leon can match up the sweat tracking down his brows with his own, before Cloud says, “Didn’t know you could regrow a bone like that.”

“The sleeve is new,” Leon manages out before he passes out.

It occurs to Leon that Cloud’s one of the few left that know it.

 

\--

 

There are sightings of Cloud around the town and in it, once in a while. Yuffie has dubbed him skittish, though that’s the last trait anyone should assume of him, Leon thinks; she reasons to Leon who listens only with a half ear about Cloud, about Aerith who seems to be the only one who can approach him, that, “Do you think he avoids us because you were too forward and offered him one of the extra beds in the house? Aerith probably just gave him a flower and asked him how his day was. And he keeps losing me when I try to follow him. I think Cid thinks he’s actually not real.” 

“Yuffie,” Leon says, “have you patrolled Ravine Trail yet?” as misdirection, because it isn’t as though he hasn’t been wondering about Cloud’s situation in the back of his head, just as he wonders after Sora sometimes: which worlds he finds himself in, whether or not Goofy and Donald are keeping him out of trouble as much as in it. He wonders about the Cloud he found back in the Coliseum, not yet troubled, but eyes darker with some understanding of the world, and a chase after a man with no trail.

Yuffie rolls her eyes, and continues spinning lazily in Cid’s leather chair.

 

\--

 

2. 

“Sorry,” Leon says, really badly, “didn’t think that would catch you off guard.”

Cloud says, “Thanks,” he says, says it like a bit of an afterthought, a little [dryly]. His fire would attract Heartless, but in a small crystal cavern off the side of Ravine Trail, he seems to have found a balance between the pits and a level where the darkness never ventures. He looks up at Leon (looks Leon [in the eye]), and then lowers them back to the fire, frowns, smallish, [derisively], to himself, and stokes it.

It’s a while, before Cloud says, “You look like shit,” and Leon says, “You’re welcome.”

Cloud chuckles. It’s slow, a short second. He’s some form of quiet: much gloomier than he was back in the Coliseum, muscles tensing, blade thrust forward fast like a whipcord. His face was lighter then, with more direction and fierceness, pauldron grey instead of black. He rubs at his scraped cheek with the back of a bare hand and checks it.

“You get enough sun?” Leon asks, unable to help himself. He feels like someone’s father, then, and just decides it doesn’t matter how he comes across. “Eat enough out here?” He’s not even sure what there is to eat.

Cloud peeks up at him from under those long, long bangs. “I go into town now and again.” It’s pointed.

“Aerith’s cookies.”

He’s earned a small smile. “Maybe.”

Just like that, Leon thinks Cloud will let him stay.

 

\--

 

“I think he’s wandering out there,” Aerith says quietly, when it’s just her and Leon. Yuffie has found some way to disappear all over again, and Cid has clocked out for the night. She sometimes wanders into the office, folds her legs and sinks down next to the chalkboard, and places her chin on her hands on the tops of her knees. She’ll wait until Leon realizes she’s there, which can take as long as an hour to until he realizes he’s being watched, and then she’ll say what she’s been wanting to say to him. 

Often it’s, “You should go to bed,” or, “Are you hungry? I’ve brought you something,” but she’s so peaceful that it’s only when she stands up and puts a hand over his on the console that Leon feels the exhaustion in his bones.

“I know you won’t sleep anytime soon,” Aerith says gently, “but could you take a nap and then check on him? I don’t think he knows what to do with himself these days.”

Leon doesn’t either, but he keeps himself busy.

(He doesn’t nap. He straps on his gunblade as soon as Aerith is gone, and goes. He suspects she knew he would anyway.)

 

\--

 

3. 

“No potions?” Cloud asks him. They’ve got Leon’s pants down to his knees, and Cloud is running a bare palm flat over where his femur is, repairing the collagen. It’s a weight that Leon feels along with the pain, fingers straining on Cloud’s shoulder. Other flat on the side of his thigh to keep the bone in place. “How about in your belts?” 

“You’re romantic,” Leon manages out, instead of that it’s a bit late to ask that.

Cloud doesn’t respond, but his hand tenses up curled around Leon’s hipbone even though the Cure is as faultless as it can get.

“This is all I can do,” Cloud says, at last. But he doesn’t withdraw. He doesn’t offer. He doesn’t ask. He’s known since Coliseum, but it’s this knowledge, suddenly, [sharply], [angrily], that Leon could have done this all himself, much better even, that seems to make his voice tight.

Leon loosens his hold on Cloud’s shoulders, and leans back against the side of the cavern wall. He makes no move to his leg, and he doesn’t, even when Cloud settles on the other side.

“So what do you do for fun around here?” Leon asks, to break the ice.

 

\--

 

Back in the Coliseum, they would spar in between matches. Because Cloud’s fingers were itchy and could be curled around the back of Leon’s neck while his teeth bit and mouth pulled at Leon’s top, then bottom lip, to get at teeth and tongue; because there was something in the adrenaline that made Cloud seem desperate instead of angry like he wanted to be, and that vulnerability meant Leon couldn’t leave him alone even when Cloud felt exposed.

Leon takes the gunblade out for a while, once in a while. If he fights enough Heartless farther and farther away from the perimeter of the town, he finds he can sit better with himself. He can pretend, in some form of it, that he’s doing his part in saving a home that has long since been transformed into something unrecognizable.

But Heartless don’t remind Leon of anything. They don’t look you in the eyes and ask you a question. They don’t slide their fingers through your hair, and call you by a name you don’t let anyone call you anymore. 

“Squall?” 

Leon isn’t concentrating enough. That’s why one gets deep into his flesh to get at his femur.

 

\--

 

4.

They’ve cleared out a range of Heartless in what Cloud calls the Crystal Fissure before they start sparring. Leon hasn’t forgotten what Cloud’s charges feel like, but he’s underestimated how much time Cloud spends out here just fighting. He has to cast a series of –Ga level spells, but he catches up fast enough to Cloud’s erratic rhythm: they’ve always had a pattern they could read off each other.

The sky’s cast in pitch by the time they return to the cavern.

“No bed?” Leon asks.

Cloud snorts. “You use one?”

Leon is tempted to say something about being a caveman, but he’s taken aback by how much he finds he doesn’t want to leave Cloud’s side again. Cloud doesn’t offer alternate accommodations anyway, but somehow this only really endears him further to Leon, in the way that Cloud’s dry personality always has managed.

They haven’t touched skin to skin since Cloud patched Leon’s femur back, but it’s a feeling that ekes a way into Leon’s heart even when he rises early to head back into town.

 

\--

 

5.

Leon develops a routine: Restoration work, repair work, scour through the blueprints and files on Ansem the Wise’s computer, and do a perimeter patrol of Ravine Trail. He spends his mornings in Hollow Bastion, his evenings in Hollow Bastion, and the dawn sparring with Cloud until both of them tire out.

Cloud tires easily as the days pass by. He keeps the sleeve under his pauldron on, the armour guarding his legs on, but he refuses what Leon doesn’t ask anymore to give.

Leon is pragmatic. If he’s to devote himself, he wants every inch; he doesn’t share well. He doesn’t share in Cloud’s obsession with strength, and he doesn’t find any sort of interest in helping him get there. But he’s loyal too, which contradicts the odds.

And he’s been loyal for so long, had his faith returned in so many ways by the surviving population of Radiant Garden, that when it comes to Cloud, it seems too natural.

In the Coliseum, Cloud eventually got used to him enough to rest his head upon Leon’s shoulder as he slept, and Leon could see how many years had passed since Radiant Garden had fallen to the darkness in the sharpness of his face.

One day, Cloud asks him, casually (quietly, [quietly], [[quietly]]), “So when are you going to touch me back?”

 

\--

 

6.

It’s been ten years, and maybe it’ll be ten more, then another ten more. Cloud rests, arms limp, his breath shallow on Leon’s collarbone, the fit of his body more angular, broader in Leon’s arms than the days in Coliseum fighting. His hair is soft against Leon’s shoulder, and when Leon ducks his head to feel the brush of it against his cheek, he wonders if Cloud will let time touch him the way Leon desperately wants to turn it back.  
  
There’s a darkness in the world that Cloud chases, Leon knows that. Leon has seen that darkness in his own eyes, but there’s a different between taking it and following it, and taking it and leading the path away.

It’s not about wondering if Cloud will let him stay anymore; Leon wonders if Cloud will let him follow, because one day, Cloud settles himself somewhere comfortable, folds his arms, and closes his eyes, and Leon looks and can’t stop looking, because Cloud isn’t.


End file.
